Reddit Combats Trolls, Harassment With New Blocking Tool

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Spam, trolling, and harassment should soon be less of an issue on Reddit.

The online community on Wednesday introduced a new "block user" feature to help you filter unwanted messages. Reddit has offered a basic blocking feature since at least 2011, but you could only prevent others from sending you private messages. Now, you can hide comments and posts from specific users as well.

To do so, just click the "Block User" button while viewing a reply in your inbox. Once you do that, the person's profile, along with all their comments, posts, and messages will be "completely removed from your view," and you won't receive any alerts if they message you in the future, Reddit said. It will almost be like they never existed at all.

And you won't have to worry about Reddit alerting the blocked user about this. Just like before, the block is completely silent to the offending party, meaning they won't be privy to the fact that you silenced them. You can always reverse the action from your preferences page, if you so choose.

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"Our changes to user blocking are intended to let you decide what your boundaries are, and to give you the option to choose what you want — or don't want — to be exposed to," Reddit wrote. "Of course, you can and should still always report harassment to our community team!"

Reddit said this is just one of the first steps its planning to improve the user experience on its site. "We're looking forward to announcing many more," the site said.

Angela has been a PCMag reporter since January 2012. Prior to joining the team, she worked as a reporter for SC Magazine, covering everything related to hackers and computer security. Angela has also written for The Northern Valley Suburbanite in New Jersey, The Dominion Post in West Virginia, and the Uniontown-Herald Standard in Pennsylvania. She is a graduate of West Virginia University's Perely Isaac Reed School of Journalism.
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